Performance Comparison Between SiC and Si Neutron Detectors in Deuterium–Tritium Fusion Neutron Irradiation

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) detector is considered to be a good substitute for silicon (Si) detector in neutron detection, considering its mature of device fabrication in large sensitive area and thick sensitive volume, high charge-collection efficiency, significant neutron–gamma discrimination, and excellent endurance in harsh environment, and it is expected to meet the demands of neutron detection in increasingly harsh irradiation field. The performance comparison between SiC and Si neutron detector in neutron irradiation is an important issue but is not fully studied: no researcher has ever made a comparative study on them in constant fusion neutron irradiation. In this paper, the SiC and Si detectors irradiated by constant deuterium–tritium fusion neutron irradiation were tested and compared, getting significant difference in performance degradation: a significant degradation was found in the Si detector at a neutron fluence of $1.65\,\,\times \,\,10^{13}$ cm−2, which showed a marked increase in dark current (over four orders of magnitude) and a serve reduction in the peak centroid of the alpha spectrum (over 95%), while nearly no degradation was observed in SiC detector at a much higher neutron fluence ( $3.82\times 10^{13}$ cm−2). The SiC detector is proven to have better radiation resistance than the Si detector at a fluence of around $10^{13}$ cm−2, and thus, it could replace the traditional Si detector in constant neutron irradiation field at least at a fluence of $10^{13}$ cm−2.